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01 February 2012

The mild winter has
lulled us into a false sense of security. It turned cold last Friday,
and grew colder over the weekend. The Newbury Parkrun was cold
although the puddles were still liquid: and although it did not rain
or snow, and there was no wind, it was not good weather for spending
extended periods of time in the open looking for an escaped llama.

By yesterday it was
bitterly cold, and I worked from home wearing a woolly hat and making
use of microwaveable heat pads. It was one of those days – do
others have them too, or am I unusual? - when the tasks that need to
be carried out hide themselves away, out of my consciousness. I know
it is important to work through some of the items on my to do list,
but I simply do not have the will. The cold seeps into my body and
any mojo that I had seeps out.

Ann appeared in the
middle of the morning, when I was contemplating driving the car to
the garage in anticipation of its MoT test on Thursday. She had taken
a break from the llama hunt to check her emails, for which she needed to borrow a computer which I gladly let
her do in return for a lift back from the garage – a three mile
run, surrendered with no resistance whatsoever.

On the drive back, she
stopped to take a phone call from a BBC journalist who was meeting
her at 12 to interview her about the llama hunt. Getting as much
publicity as possible seemed the key to finding Yasmin right from the
moment she jumped out of our field, so this was a major development.

By 1230 the idea of
heating up the home-made carrot soup that was waiting for me in the
fridge was compelling – not so much on account of the nourishment
but more for the heat. And I had scarcely finished it than my phone
rang and an excited Ann told me they had spotted the escapee: could I
come to help? Well, no, unfortunately, because we just took the car
to the garage (and the two cars outside the house are not legally
useable). Then could I email all the people who'd been party to a
series of emails the day before? Yes, but I hadn't been a party to
that conversation – I had to have Hilary forward the emails to me,
then cut and paste addresses and spend 15 minutes weeding misformed
addresses out of the resulting list. But I got the request for help
out to about 30 people, who are probably now mostly cursing me for
cluttering up their inboxes. I also included a request for a lift,
because Andrea, the only other llama-hunter I knew in the village,
hadn't answered her phone when I called her to ask if she could at
least take me to the scene of the action, even if she didn't want to
participate herself.

Hilary said she would
come home immediately, then Andrea did answer her phone having just
returned home from her morning's llama hunt. She wasn't enthusiastic
about going straight out again, but was willing to give me a lift. No
sooner had we arranged that than one of my unknown email
correspondents called me to offer a lift and request directions. And
when Andrea pulled up to collect me, so too did Hilary, who needed to
change before joining in, so collecting our extra volunteer en route
we headed to what seemed like the easiest point at which to join the
roundup.

When Hilary caught up
with us there she told us that Ann had called her and said that the
previous junction was closer, so we headed back up the A34 to
Compton, but only a short distance up the road word came from Ann
that Yasmin was safely in the trailer, so it only remained for us to
get a glimpse of her in captivity before going home.

I didn't expend much
physical energy in all this: most of the time I was sitting in one
car or another. But when I got home I was exhausted. It has
certainly been an interesting and novel experience. It must have been
even more so for the BBC crew, one of whom had played an important
part in herding Yasmin into the trailer and whose vehicle had also
been pressed into service as a barrier to prevent her from avoiding
the trailer. But it seems that the two male llamas who'd been walked
for miles over the Berkshire Downs were a strong enough attraction,
and eventually Yasmin went into the trailer quite willingly. She will
be dining out for years on the stories from her four days or so of
freedom. And her TV stardom.